The heat is on in Tucson and training this week was like walking into a blast furnace. The combination of the powerful sun with the radiating heat off the ground makes things difficult, but my desire to always train in the middle of the day just compounds the issue. This won't last long as I am only here in Tucson for a few more weeks and then hopefully by that time the Midwest will have finally thawed out and I can make my return home.

Right now I am still unsure of whether I will do Ironman Texas or Memphis in May. I haven't done any "real" endurance training since my build into Ironman Cabo, but nonetheless I feel the tractor beam that is Ironman pulling me towards Ironman Texas. I have spent this entire build almost entirely dedicated to speed and I do like experimentation so going into Ironman Texas without those "textbook" endurance workouts doesn't scare me. Truthfully, I won't make my decision until I pack all my stuff in the car and get rolling. Actually I won't have to make the decision until I come to the fork in the road in West Texas on I-10. One path leads to Dallas and then to Memphis, the other leads to Houston. Who knows, I might even show up in Houston just to get a pulse on how everyone else looks and then make my decision. That is the beauty of traveling by car.

As for my training this week. I got in a solid interval workout (12x400 @ 1:12 with 400 jog recovery) and a solid lactate threshold (5K at 16:20) workout on the run. My biking consisted again of only about 50 minutes of real work doing 8 min intervals somewhere short of threshold. They are being done as field testing and are based on a precise course so roughly 8 mins. I did them at 333, 325, 335, 347, 339, and 349 - Powertap watts, dirty chain, and I am a robust 157lb right now fwiw. Lastly for the swim, I got in four solid sessions - which are never comparable because I don't do flipturns - and consisted of 25s, 100s, and 200s. None of it was aerobic, none of it was LT, it was all above LT for the swim.

Volume has been down a bit from my Ironman build pre-Cabo. I am sure there are plenty of amateur athletes putting in much longer weeks time wise, but I really like this 17-22 hours for me. It works well with my schedule and I must say that I have been feeling surprisingly strong as I focus on getting in a ton of healthy fats (4-5 avocados a day) and lots of bananas on the carbs side.